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Friday, November 3, 2017

Jen's Wedding Dress

My friend Jen got married last month in San Francisco. At the beginning of this year, she contacted me about making her wedding outfit. She's not crazy about dresses, but she really liked the idea of a jumpsuit. She included a removable skirt element to make it feel like a wedding dress not just a white jumpsuit.

She sent me some reference images of existing design elements that she liked. Then I made a couple different sketches putting those elements together. We did some back and forth until the right design came together.

From that sketch, I made the pattern and sewed a muslin version for fitting. I sent that to Jen for the first fitting. It's wasn't totally off, but I had plenty of fixes to make. We did a skype fitting so I could see it live and Jen made marks on the muslin with safety pins. She sent me back the muslin and I used that to alter to pattern to better fit her. I pieced together the final outfit, then she came to visit me in August so that I could a final fitting in person and complete the outfit.

Jen loved it and it was the perfect outfit for all the dancing she did at her wedding. This was my first wedding ensemble made for another person. I had to break out all my old college pattern making textbooks to make sure I was putting it together right, but I'm really happy how it all turned out.